It's just personal stories that are basically "hey, this guy is awesome at a lot of stuff."

Hm. Well, I do remember how OCD he was about his subjects--reviewing videotapes of himself doing martial arts, studying moves, etc.

So, in that regard, I guess his approach, if you could infer one, was basically getting in his 10,000 hours in 1/4-1/3 of the time of most people.

Please correct me if my recollection is wrong though.

Some of the concepts I picked up from it:

- Practice something enough to get to the point where you can perform the act/task without thinking. Your brain will then be freed up to focus on higher level things. Picture yourself moving up different levels of a pyramid.

This is also how you can slow things down in your mind. Because you've experienced something so much, your brain doesn't have to do as much processing. He talks about this in depth, The Inner Game of Tennis talks about it, and one or two other books I read this year mentioned this concept.

- Invest in loss. Most entrepreneurs have heard this 1,000 times, but it was still great to read his take on it. He couldn't get better without experiencing a little pain in practice.

- Don't fight, avoid, or deny negative forces. Instead, you should look to channel what's coming at you into something positive. He talks about the chess player who would play mental tricks on him or kick him under the table. It through him off at first, but he learned to embrace it and overcome it.

- Find a trigger zone. Develop a routine that will get you ready for peak performance. It could be for Tai Chi or a business meeting (which he gives an example of).

There is a lot more to the book, but those are a few of the main concepts he talks about.

While the book is highly autobiographical, the author does goes into a lot of detail about how he got really good at chess and tai chi.

What a lot of people seem to forget to mention about the 10,000 hour theory is that it's 10,000 hours of purposeful, focused practice. The Art of Learning is all about doing that kind of practice.

Actually "Pragmatic Thinking & Learning" is excellent and I totally forgot about it. I'd probably swap that into my list.

Austrian economics is the opposite of a superpower. It's a mental device for rationalizing the present state of the world so that you never have to act.

You will learn much more about mainstream economics from about.com for example.

Well, except for the fact that an Austrian economist would change almost everything about how most Western governments handle economic policy. That's a cute sentence though.

You will see a lot of the subchapter type arguments mentioned in the news and the like and at least now you have one perspective on the issues which even if you don't agree with it forces you to articulate your own side better.

It's a really good book for a layperson to start thinking about the economics section of the news. It's written well, too.

I have given away ~20 copies of this book so far and have gotten nothing but praise even from Marxists.

I don't know why I even bother to make this long post since Austrians in general are very,very far removed from being status quo-ists so your comment doesn't even make sense. The book is also not overly Austrian apart from the recommended reading.

Feel free to recommend a better "basics of economics" book.

When banks get bailed-out by government, they're unhappy. When trade agreements and refusal to enforce labor laws pushes down wages and lengthens hours, that's "the free market".